London2London Via The World: Sarah Outen Preparing To Resume Round-The-World Journey

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Sarah Outen is preparing to resume her human powered attempt to circumnavigate the blog and is now simply waiting for a weather window to depart on the next leg of her journey. That leg will be a 7500-nautical mile (13,890 km) solo crossing of the Pacific Ocean that begins in Japan and ends in Canada.

As you may recall, Sarah began her journey on April 1 of 2011, embarking on an expedition that she called London2London via the World. After kayaking down the River Thames and paddling across the English Channel, she then proceeded to ride her bike across Europe and Asia, before making a short kayaking journey into Japan. She originally expected the L2L to take about 2.5 years to complete and upon arriving in Japan, it appeared that she was actually a bit ahead of schedule. That all changed when she started her Pacific Row last summer.

While out on the water, just a few days after departing, a tropical storm hit Sarah’s position, damaging her boat and requiring the Japanese Coast Guard to come to her assistance. That incident was a setback that required Outen to regroup and find a new boat. It has taken until now for that to happen, and at long last she’s ready to begin again.

Unfortunately the weather hasn’t been all that cooperative thus far and it may be a few days before she can finally depart. Storms have been hitting the Japanese coast, making it impossible to launch right now. But Sarah is very patient and she’ll wait for the right time to get underway. The forecasts indicate it could be the end of the week before she gets a few consecutively good days that will allow for the re-launch.

The Pacific crossing is expected to take about six months to complete and upon her arrival in Canada, Sarah will once again return to her bike for a scenic ride across North America. When she finishes that leg of the journey, she’ll return to her boat once again and row across the Northern Atlantic, return home to London where the entire adventure began.

Good luck and godspeed Sarah. I hope you can get to pulling those rows again soon.

Kraig Becker